two kingdoms, hundreds of thousands of miles
And now for something a little different. I should have taken a picture of this.
In the vitamins section One-A-Day had two vitamins for men: the normal Men’s Health Formula and the Men’s Pro Edge.
The Pro Edge had half the tablets (50 vs. 100) at vitamin levels about 20% higher than the Men’s Health Formula.
For the same price.
Someone at One-A-Day marketing wasn’t taking their vitamins. 
I’ve been a trainer in corporate workflow software for 13 of my nearly 15 years at Halliburton. It’s been tough and rewarding, but I thank God that He has placed me in my position.
My customers, people who use the software that the IT department writes, face an interesting dilemma when it comes to learning the latest and greatest. Sometimes trial-and-error by people familiar with the current version is unacceptable when learning the new version. Trainers must be employed, but the dilemma is when?
Markets have cycles of good and bad times, therefore businesses have cycles of good and bad times. John Maynard Keynes knew this and even tried to stop it, but all that did was push debt on to future generations. Our company has good times, generally right after the price of oil and gas come up, and poor times, such as when oil was $9/bbl in 1999. The size of our company expands and contracts with the amount of work that people want to do at a certain oil price.
Reuters reports that the Supreme Court has upheld the federal law protecting vaccine makers from lawsuits that arise from damage caused by vaccines.
Adventures in Autism blogger Ginger Taylor says, “The world has just changed.” The Reuters article says that the Court protected vaccine manufacturers. These statements are not entirely correct.
The Supreme Court protected the government. At issue was the necessity for a law to mean what it says. We can’t have laws that, for example, promise that we can drive 65 mph on major highways but allow the highway patrol to pull us over for doing 55.
National Taxpayers Union reports:
In Ohio, Governor-elect John Kasich said that he would deliver on a promise to cut the state’s income tax in his first budget and announced plans to stop a new passenger train project. His statements are welcome news for Ohio, which has the 18th highest state and local tax burden in the nation and the third worst business tax climate in the country according to the Tax Foundation.
Make it happen. Please. The 3C rail system would have received continued government subsidies and run an average speed of 41 mph between Cleveland and Columbus, according to its own proponents at the Engineers Foundation of Ohio conference in September.
Reducing costs and making Ohio more business-friendly. These are promises worth keeping.
Leading off the second and final day of the Engineers Foundation of Ohio Continuing Professional Development conference was two hours of a preview of the “3C” Passenger Rail Plan, which would connect Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, and other cities with high-speed passenger rail.
Stu Nicholson, public information office for the Ohio Rail Development Commission, gave what was essentially a sales case for the 3C project, even though the law authorizing the route had been passed and $400 million in federal stimulus money had been approved for the project. He made the following points:
There was a case study involving the Amtrak Downeaster, which currently runs from Boston up to Portland, Maine, and is being extended up to Brunswick. Commuters like not having to live in high-tax Massachusetts in order to work in Boston.
From Bizzyblog, June 30, 2009. Worth repeating as the vote comes today.
Questions for those advocating the “public plan” option in Obamacare:
- Will the “public plan” pay income and other taxes like the companies who run private plans must? (Example: Aetna alone incurred $790 million in income tax expenses in calendar 2008, and over $3.5 billion in the past four years. The company’s most recent 10-K [PDF] indicates that this expense is almost entirely related to its Health Care and Group Insurance.)
- What will anyone do to keep the “public plan” from taking advantage of other unfair advantages, which could at least include general government absorption of administrative costs, sales-tax exemptions, property-tax exemptions, ”public service” advertising, and much more?
- Will the “public plan” be just as vulnerable to class-action and no-limit malpractice lawsuits as private plans currently are?
- If the answers to Question 1, 2, or 3 are “no” or “I don’t know,” how can you possibly claim to know that the “public plan’s” competition against private plans will be conducted on a level playing field?
Related Update: On Sunday, Alo at Brain Shavings went after and properly characterized Obama’s snotty question (”Why would [the "public option"] drive private insurers out of business?”), and tore it to pieces. You can add the items ID’d in Questions 1-3 above to Alo’s cited reasons.
